River of Ruin

 

It begins at a Paris auction house, with a favor granted by an old high school friend to geologist Philip Mercer: the opportunity to buy a rare diary written during the French attempt at digging the Panama Canal. But Mercer isn€t the only one who wants it. Three Chinese assassins have been dispatched to get it, forcing Mercer into a subterranean game of cat and mouse that takes him from the hellish maze of l€empire de la mort and through the sewers of Paris.

 

Mercer realizes he has uncovered an intricate Chinese plot to trigger a deadly shift in the world€s balance of power. At stake is control of the canal, recently handed over to the government of Panama by the United States. Only Philip Mercer€"with help from beautiful U.S. Army officer Lauren Vanik, a cell of tough French Foreign Legion commandos, and a crusty eighty-year-old retired sea captain named Harry White€"can stop them.